Jonson was a classically educated, well-read and cultured man of the English Renaissance with an appetite for controversy (personal and political, artistic and intellectual) whose cultural influence was of unparalleled breadth upon the playwrights and the poets of the Jacobean era (1603–1625) and of the Caroline era (1625–1642).
Early life
Ben Jonson said that his family originally came from the folk of the Anglo-Scottish border country, which genealogy is verified by the three spindles (rhombi) in the Jonson family coat of arms. One spindle is a diamond-shaped heraldic device shared with the Border-country Johnstone family of Annandale. Jonson's clergyman father died two months before his birth; his mother married a master bricklayer two years later. Jonson attended school in St. Martin's Lane. Later, a family friend paid for his studies at Westminster School, where the antiquarian, historian, topographer and officer of arms, William Camden (1551–1623) was one of his masters. In the event, the pupil and the master became friends, and the intellectual influence of Camden's broad-ranging scholarship upon Jonson's art and literary style remained notable, until Camden's death in 1623.
"Drink today, and drown all sorrow; You shall perhaps not do it tomorrow; Best, while you have it, use your breath; There is no drinking after death"
"Queen and huntress, chaste and fair, / Now the sun is laid to sleep, / Seated in thy silver chair, / State in wonted manner keep: / Hesperus entreats thy light, / Goddess, excellently bright."
"True happiness consists not in the multitude of friends, but in the worth and choice."
"Drink to me only with thine eyes, And I will pledge with mine; Or leave a kiss but in the cup And I'll not look for wine"
"Follow a shadow, it still flies you,"
"There is no greater hell than to be a prisoner of fear."
"They say Princes learn no art truly, but the art of horsemanship. The reason is, the brave beast is no flatterer. He will throw a prince as soon as his groom."
"A woman, the more curious she is about her face, is commonly the more careless about her house"
"She is Venus when she smiles; / But she's Juno when she walks, / And Minerva when she talks."
[00.00.00] Jonathan Kay. Welcome to the Quillette podcast. I’m your host, Jonathan Kay, a senior editor at Quillette ... [00.05.06] So yeah ... Ben Jonson writes a play, I think, in [1616], which is a defence of Christmas, because he’s aware it’s under threat.
As far as possible, I only give books at Christmas... Advertisement. FutureVision ... PastoralGardens ... Tree ... Ben Jonson, Shakespeare’s friend and contemporary, whose words feature in the opening dedication, described the playwright as the soul of the age ... .
Perhaps he’s distancing himself at this point from the comments made on his work by the English poet-playwright, Ben Jonson. Jonson’s praise, as recorded by Drummond, had been offset by the judgment ...
He was extraordinarily productive ...And then there was music ... [See also ... He saw himself as a neo-Elizabethan, a direct descendant of Ben Jonson and Shakespeare, though there are some who would liken him more to Shakespeare’s minor rival Robert Greene.
Coach Ben Jonson also added a couple nice transfers, Tyler Cochran from Toledo among them ... The Illini have length and talent throughout their team and a terrific shooter in 6-9 Evansville transfer Ben Humrichous.
There followed such fine NT performances as Dame Purecraft, a closet hedonist with money, in Richard Eyre’s glorious 1989 revival of Ben Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair; as a magisterially deaf ...
In theater, particularly in the works of Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, the term “humor” refers to exaggerated personality traits based on the imbalance of bodily fluids.
A recitative — a sung narrative — was first heard in Britain in 1617, when composer Nicholas Lanier used it in the music for a masque by writer Ben Jonson ... However, after the Lanier and Jonson work, ...
about John Dee, about ‘Gematria’, about Thomas Thorpe, about Ben Jonson, etc., except to point out that Waugh managed to be extremely knowledgeable and suggestive about the sort of 16th Century...
‘Spies, you are lights in state, but of base stuff,/ Who, when you’ve burnt yourselves down to the snuff,/ Stink, and are thrown away.’ Ben Jonson likened his fellow secret agents to a tallow candle. a grotty necessity, to be discarded without regret.
1 Gémeaux is the French name for which sign of the zodiac?. 2 The music festival Fuji Rock is held in which country? ... 9 Ben Jonson wrote about the “laudable use” of which. Related articles. MINDGAMES ... .
There are some bitchy comments by contemporaries about him, from Robert Greene’s ‘upstart crow’ to Ben Jonson saying he had ‘small Latin and less Greek’ ... I wish he’d mentioned Jonson’s extraordinary ...
